Azure in Sable
by Eirian Erisdar
Summary: When Kanda returns from a mission, he finds Lenalee has been imprisoned for refusing to serve the Black Order any further. This raises many questions in his eleven-year old heart - what can be done for her aid? What does she mean to him? And why on earth should he even care? Comfort and fluff with some suggestions of romance. Set when Kanda is about eleven and Lenalee nine.


**Happy new year! I haven't written D Gray-Man for a long while, except that recent Christmas Special for A Masquerade of Shadows, but this is a new oneshot for all who like Kanda/Lenalee. Dark at times, but sweet. Hope you like it!**

The front gate of European Headquarters has always been imposing and bleak. Sheer grey walls, a dull mirror of the ghostly moon above, warn any travers to _turn back, turn back, and do not venture this way again._ For, the entrance, forty feet of barred stone that is as impenetrable as it is unsmiling, is always shut. It is sentinel to the perilous lives of all those within, close to a thousand souls who have made their life's work to save the entrapped souls of others. And so it has been for a hundred years, prey hunting the hunter to free the ones already taken.

If all that does not insert a chill into every visitor's bones, then the Gatekeeper certainly would.

A chill mixed in with a little disgust, perhaps.

For Kanda Yuu, it's just plain revulsion.

"Open up," he barks, hating how his voice is still unbroken and high. He snorts. Just another reason for people to mistake him for a girl. But that has become sporadic now. After all, being only eleven, Kanda is already taller than most fifteen-year olds, and something about that grim, unsmiling expression of his strikes wariness into all those who see him, see the figure clothed in sable and silver, with a star upon his chest. Wariness into all those who have a squick of wisdom, anyway. The fools, the drunkards and the thieves always glance at his thin form, the spirit of thievery glinting in their eyes as the silver gleam of the Rose Cross lulls them.

Those people usually scatter like rats when the mirrored blade of Kanda's chokuto is thrust into their faces.

At last, the sleepy face of the Gatekeeper wakens, live stone gawping bulge-eyed at the Exorcist before him. "WHO GOES THERE?" he booms, self-important in his cowardice, trying, and failing, to hide his fear.

A sigh, like wind caressing a thousand lotus petals. Mugen hovers, whispering death, above the Gatekeeper's right eye. "Shut it," Kanda snarls, balancing effortlessly on the folds of stone that make up the Gatekeeper's face. "And let me through."

Something infinitesimally tiny in the Gatekeeper's mind clicks into place as he stares cross-eyed into innocence-covered blade. Something to do with the malice in this young man's eyes…

"…Kanda Yuu!" the Gatekeeper cries, snot running from his nose in his relief. "I thought you could be an Akuma! What a relief! I was so–"

Speaking slowly and dangerously quietly, as if to an idiot who is about to break his patience, Kanda murmurs, "If you value your face, my dear Gatekeeper – since your face is _all_ of you – you know what to do."

The doors in the tower grind open with surprising speed. Kanda withdraws his chokuto without further ado, leaping and flipping nimbly off the Gatekeeper's face, avoiding the pool of snot on the ground, and slips into the dark crack between the doors like an insubstantial wraith of smoke. The Gatekeeper is left to hyperventilate on his own.

Within the tower, Kanda frowns – even deeper than usual – at the empty hallway. He'd been away for six months, the longest mission in his history as an Exorcist. Not that he _enjoys_ it, but whenever he comes back from missions, and Lenalee is in Headquarters, she is always just inside the entrance, welcoming him home with a wide smile. _Why should this be the exception?_ Kanda muses. Not that he wants to admit it – in fact, he would never admit it – but Lenalee's smile is the only smile he has ever received from anyone, apart from his master and Marie, and hers seems…more important, somehow.

Kanda doesn't quite know where these thoughts are leading him, but he's quite curious where. So, taking leave of the Black Order Supervisor – namely, walking out – as soon as the necessary words are said, he goes in search of Reever. Reever, deputy head of the science division, is not privy to as much information as the actual section chief, but somehow knows all that is important. He keeps his sources a cherished secret.

Kanda hates depending on others' information. But perhaps this once, the need to know outweighs the sacrifice in pride.

(:~:)

Reever has his chin on the table, slouched with two hands in front of him, fiddling with an unwieldy bit of machinery. His chair balances on its front two legs, creaking ominously. Reever's eyes are half-closed, a product of long work hours and overtime, but his fingers do not pause in their motion, fitting each piece of delicate metal into the other with precise clicks, until a burnished little silver box glints tantilisingly before him. With a deft flick of a finger, the box unfurls, revealing a tiny figure of a young girl. The little mechanical girl dances on the tips of her boots, the Rose Cross shining bright on her uniform, and appears to smile as she follows the motions pre-set for her.

Somehow, watching this perfect model of Lenalee dancing before him, Reever feels a sort of brotherly protectiveness over her, but sorrow nonetheless. Just as this figure's movements are controlled by the whirl of electricals and wiring within her, as she is designed to do, Lenalee's actions always were, and always must be, directed by the Order.

Reever is so enraptured by the tiny figure before him, he does not notice when a silver-lined sable coat stops before his desk, nor the hands of the young man shiver as their owner gazes at the mechanical model.

It is only when Kanda creeps forward a hand to touch the figure lightly does Reever jolt spectacularly, falling out of his chair and scattering papers everywhere as his flailing arms scrabble for purchase. When a disheveled blonde head finally appears from below the desk, hair even more unruly than usual, Kanda's gaze is impatient.

"Ah, Kanda," Reever mumbles, and rubs his sore forehead. _Why must it be him?_ "Is there something I can help you with?" he enquires. Reever is careful not to use the tone he usually would when addressing someone of Kanda's age. Other children would smile at him and perhaps overcome their shyness. Kanda…Kanda wouldn't be _shy_ in the first place. A gentle tone would be rewarded by Mugen in the speaker's face, or a glare fiery enough to cause spontaneous combustion. Kanda can't even be called a _child,_ just something…different.

"Do you know where Lenalee is?" Kanda says bluntly. It almost isn't a question.

Reever notices that the small figure of her is cradled in Kanda's hands. Kanda must have saved it from Reever's insane flailings as he had tried to right himself. "Uh…I wouldn't know," he blabbers unconvincingly. "You'll have to ask the supervisor."

Kanda's young face already has the bitter gaze of a full-grown adult, but now it becomes tinged with anger, and something else, something unreadable. "Spit it out, Reever," he grows, one hand sliding toward the sword at his belt. "I have no time for this."

Reever gazes back at Kanda, trying to decipher the complex web of emotions hidden under his façade. "You are aware of the consequences if you are caught?" No trace of the Reever who had fallen now. Just a warning.

"Well aware."

A sigh. "Very well then. Lenalee is in her room."

Kanda frowns. "I checked before I came here. I knocked. She didn't answer, and the door was locked."

"She is not there…" Reever says carefully, "…of her own volition."

Those words take a moment to penetrate Kanda's emotionless mask, but when they do, something akin to a snarl overwhelms his young features. "Explain," he whispers, dangerously low.

"A few weeks after you left…" Reever's voice becomes even softer. "Lenalee had a mental breakdown. She wasn't stable…Leverrier ordered her restrained."

"Leverrier." Kanda spits out the word like poison.

Reever's tired eyes seem even darker than usual. "Don't do anything rash."

Kanda gazes mutely at the figure in his hands, a thousand thoughts passing through his raven eyes, and he nods curtly. Placing the little doll carefully on the desk before Reever, Kanda spins and sweeps away, long coat making him appear taller, older, but only emphasising the weight on his shoulders.

(:~:)

Dark.

In the most extreme darkness, paradoxical things can come to be. Fantastical beings mold themselves out of seemingly impenetrable black, a living material of imagination, of worst nightmares resurrected, and all still but a prelude to a nightmare. Solid sable, yet liquid nothing, becomes a deprivation of the senses. But not all, perhaps. The single, small prisoner incarcerated here can _see_ nothing, but can hear her own panicked breathing, hear the leather restraints stretching as they bind her wrists and ankles, smell the icy damp of the windowless room, like the frozen breath of some mad beast drawing ever closer.

And she can taste the saltiness of her tears as they run unhindered between her lips.

So when the harsh bar of white light lances across the intervening pitch and pins Lenalee in its glaring blank gaze, she squeezes her eyes shut against the silhouetted figure of sable, the crash of the door against the wall mirroring the painful throb of her heart. She knows it must be one of the negotiators again, with their silver tongues and icy hearts. Or worse, Leverrier.

And so Lenalee grows still when a hand slips into hers, a hand only slightly larger than her own. The touch has not the bruising strength of the negotiators or the worried tremble of her brother, if her brother possibly could be here. Instead, it is steady. Warm. Comforting.

Lenalee wets her parched lips and asks hoarsely, "Who…who are you?"

Whoever holds her hand does not answer. He – for Lenalee is quite sure the person is male – simply increases the pressure on her hand, and tucks the thin blanket more securely around her chin, keeping in a small mote of warmth. He also loosens the restraints around her wrists and ankles, allowing blood and feeling to return to her hands and feet. Lenalee does not have the energy or the words to speak, so contents herself with the quiet. At least now, it isn't a solitary silence.

A while later, the person murmurs in a strange voice halfway between that of a boy and a man, "Sleep. You'll feel better."

"Will you come back?" A little girl's voice, frightened of the dark.

"I promise I will return." Kanda himself is surprised at the warmth that flows out from between his lips.

Comforted by the reassuring presence by her side, Lenalee allows the enveloping darkness to overwhelm her, no longer afraid of it.

When Kanda is sure Lenalee is asleep, he gently releases her hand and rearranges the blanket about her, and then turns silently on his heel and slips back into the lighted corridor outside, closing the door behind him with a soft _click. _ For a moment, he leans against the thick wood, marveling at its ability to dampen sound. It really is a prison cell. But as he feels the polished grain of the wood beneath his fingertips, he wonders what has possessed him to act as he just did. _Reever had made it clear Lenalee's mental state is extremely unstable, so they must have restrained her for her own safety…but why do I still think she is a prisoner? And why do I…care?_

Hating himself for what he must do, Kanda fishes two small metal objects out of his pocket, the lock-picks he used to enter, and deftly re-locks the door. He lingers for a minute with his hand on the doorknob, and with a short growl, turns and stalks away, his usual graceful movements conveying a sort of confused worry.

(:~:)

General Tiedoll laughs to himself, whistling a whimsical little tune as he strides through Headquarters on 'a merry morning'. His latest tour of the world had brought some success, but it remains that people compatible with Innocence are few and far between. Still, it is good to be home, where he can rest easy without protecting others from Akuma or constantly searching for new Exorcists. In fact, he is in an even better mood than he usually is. Which is saying something, for Tiedoll. He is in _such_ high spirits, actually, that he decides to share some of this joy with his apprentice.

So, when he encounters the apprentice in question sulking spectacularly on a bench in an obscure corner of a corridor, it ruins his plans slightly.

"Yes?" Kanda mutters under his breath, staring at his boots as if he wants to take his sword to them. An aura of depressing melancholy surrounds him, but it is tinged with something else, something… Tiedoll jolts. _Confusion_ is not an emotion that he associates Kanda with. Neither is worry. Actually, Tiedoll doesn't associate _any_ emotion with Kanda except a certain underlying bitterness and resentment, or perhaps loneliness.

A very disturbed young man.

"Yuu, is there something…bothering you?"

"Of course not," comes the wry reply. "What on earth could there be?" Kanda remains staring daggers at the floor, but the hard lines of his mouth gives him away.

Tiedoll picks up on the dripping sarcasm, and says doubtfully, "You can tell me, son." He reaches hesitatingly for Kanda's shoulder.

As expected, Kanda responds by standing with an unnaturally quick jerk, his Exorcist uniform swirling about him like liquid ink. "I'm not your son." The words are low and harsh in his throat, stopped by something akin to a sob. He looks away behind him to the muted darkness of the corridor.

But that cannot be. Kanda Yuu does not cry.

Kanda turns to leave, bowing once, stiffly, to his master, hand on Mugen by his side, the silver of the Rose Cross on his chest like the weight of the world, curving in his shoulders with melancholy sorrow. But he straightens proudly, dark eyes narrowing into slits as the _click-clack_ of his boots reverberate around the thick, grey stones.

As Tiedoll gazes contemplatively after Kanda, something drifts through the threads of white and sable thoughts in his mind, weaving a pattern illogical but somehow possible. "Yuu," he calls after the retreating figure. "You should probably find Lenalee and cheer up some." _After all, she is the only one here except me who smiles at him._

The fading footsteps halt, as if stricken. Kanda's hand tightens on Mugen's hilt, knuckles whitening, matching the sudden drop in temperature of his voice. "I can't."

"Of course you can! I've only seen you relax around her–" Tiedoll stops. There is something incongruous about his cheery tone in the enveloping dimness of the hallway, as if the lamps do nothing but emphasise the sharpness of the shadows and the chill air, still and void of warmth.

After a moment, Kanda speaks quietly into the silence around him, not turning his head. "You don't understand."

Long after his apprentice disappears into the waiting murk, Tiedoll remains where he is, his greying head dipped towards his clasped hands, pondering the conversation. There was something…strange about the way Kanda had reacted to Lenalee's name. As if he…was stung. _Lenalee wouldn't be one to hold a grudge,_ Tiedoll muses, examining the cracks in the stone wall opposite. _And Kanda's sour demeanor wouldn't cause a rift between them. He lives too much for her laughter._ That, at least, Tiedoll can see._ So, it isn't anger towards her, or hurt. Then it leaves no other options, unless…_

As Tiedoll comes upon his final, terrible, conclusion, his eyes widen. "They couldn't," he mutters. "They _wouldn't_." But all he understands of the Order flickers together, and he knows in the bitter recesses of his heart that they most certainly would. And they did.

With that realisation, Tiedoll discovers that his apprentice's actions do not surprise him at all. Rather, he finds himself filled with pity. Not that he could ever let Kanda know about this, or Kanda might just murder him.

(:~:)

Leverrier's office is barf-inducingly lavish. Velvet curtains everywhere, mahogany and ebony and what seems to be half the world's expensive trees fallen for the solid, heavy wooden desk, bookshelves and carved chair, golden chandeliers and silver pens. A bowl of sugary sweets in multicoloured wrappers, impossibly bright against the tomes covering each wall. A carpet of violet fluff. _Violet._ And the books themselves…their spines are clean, dark-coloured and bound with leather, but something about the way they line the bookcases, rank on rank like some forbidding army of knowledge, reveals that they are never consulted. Leverrier never needs to ask anyone anything, and never doubts his own judgement. The books are simply there for the sense of power. Perhaps whoever decorated this space decided to bombard any visitors with enough conflicting details to throw them off their thread of thought. Which just might be what Leverrier intends. The office of a dictator.

This particular morning, Leverrier digs into a huge slice of cake as he examines the reports laid out on his desk, images pinned to each. To have your picture pass over the polished surface of Leverrier's desk might mean the end of you, but really, he doesn't care. So he plays with the lives of hundreds, gloved hands moving steadily over papers and files.

All his hopes for a peaceful morning shrivel with the arrival of Kanda Yuu.

Leverrier doesn't look up as Kanda slams the door open with such force that a crack snakes up the solid wood, the retort echoing over the stone wall outside. Nor does he acknowledge Kanda's presence as silent boot-steps cross the lavender carpet with a velvet hunter's tread, and the atmosphere in the room lowers palpably by a few degrees. Only when the silvery rasp of Innocence-coated steel sounds, accompanied by a whisper of dread as Mugen hovers just above his collarbone, does Leverrier raise his head from his reflection in the blade and finally meet the gaze of the young man before him.

"Yes?" With that tone, Leverrier could have been asking whether Kanda likes the weather today.

Kanda's death-glare burns fell below his shadowy fringe, at almost exactly the same level as Leverrier, seated. Kanda reflects that he rather likes this. Here, the two are equal, notwithstanding their age. "You know what I'm here about," he snarls.

Leverrier doesn't react. Instead, he motions at the bowl of sweets, asking with a crocodile smile, "Will you take one? A _young boy_ like you must like sweets."

Kanda wonders how Leverrier would react if his face were introduced to Mugen. "I am not a child," he growls, seething at the pitch of his words. "Do not presume I will act like one."

Leverrier opens his mouth to send another verbal spear at Kanda, but pauses and appears to reconsider as Mugen presses deeper into the skin of his throat, almost drawing blood. "You _are_ aware of the consequences, should your actions continue?" A few drops of crimson blood – Kanda is surprised that Leverrier has a heart to drive them – creep out of a shallow cut at Leverrier's collarbone.

"You have no right to question my actions when yours are so abhorred," Kanda spits, adjusting his grip on Mugen's hilt. "You know why I am here."

"Ah. Of course." Leverrier reaches up with one gloved hand and holds the blade of the chokuto away from his neck with two fingers as he carefully pushes his chair back, rising up to his full height. Now he towers over Kanda, darkening Kanda's features with his shadow. All equality is gone, and when Leverrier next opens his mouth, he speaks with all the gravity of his station and holds a thinly veiled threat. "Lenalee Lee, I assume? This will be most interesting."

(:~:)

The prelude to a nightmare dances about Lenalee's hair like wraiths in their natural environment, casting their cackling laughter into her ears with every new rhythm and every silvery step of their waltz, horribly beautiful and impossibly terrifying, like insubstantial wisps of smoke whose chuckles are indistinguishable from the crackling of the fire below and the icy whispers of the night wind above, every spark a flare of pain, and every flicker a waver on the edge of the cliff of unconsciousness.

But dream-falls do not lull Lenalee to sleep now. All she can do is wait…

And wait…

But to make it worse, the click of the lock may not herald something to be feared. Before, the door had only opened to horrors, but now, the silhouette may be a…friend? A warbling laugh escapes her parched lips. Whoever isn't Leverrier or his underlings is as good as a friend to her. But through her young mind, she searches…searches for the identity of the person who comforted her. But the answer floats on the edge of her pain-muffled consciousness, like a perfect emerald leaf on the obsidian waves of an endless ocean, ever eddying just beyond her reach.

After an uncountable time, Lenalee realises she would give anything, do anything, just to hear that shadow's voice again. To calm herself, she caresses the smooth leather restraint underneath her palm–

_Her palm._

Lenalee's breath hitches. Slowly, almost reverently, she slides the rest of her hand out of the leather loop. Her tired thoughts struggle to rearrange themselves, and blearily, she remembers that the familiar stranger had loosened the loops, perhaps not realising how thin she has become in her incarceration. So for the first time in weeks, Lenalee sits up, gasping slightly as her stiff muscles pulse in unison. Her other hand is free almost immediately, and although her thin fingers slip slightly on the ankle restraints, she is able to slide off the bed a moment later.

The stone floor is bitingly cold on Lenalee's bare feet as she pads silently over to the door. The doorknob whispers cruelly, refusing to give. The next few minutes are spent in an agony of nerves, picking the lock with a pin she finds in an obscure corner of the cabinet, trembling fingers shaking the entire door.

_Click._

Blinding light, a vertical bar across her vision, welcoming and warning all at once, a hopeful breath of wind on her face, grey stone. Yet all seems drenched with colour after weeks of darkness. So staggering slightly against the wall, fingers following the lines of the bricks, Lenalee melds into the dripping shadows that flow down the walls in unending waterfalls, ever facing the wind. After so long shut away from the world, Lenalee has almost forgotten the ways of Order Headquarters, but after an indeterminable time, like rising out of layers of water towards the incandescent light and suddenly breaking the surface, she comes upon the world outside.

The sunlight causes her even more pain than the first light outside her bedroom, but it is a good pain, one that melds into the warmth finally creeping into her hands and face. The haloed sun seems so close, Lenalee reaches out with an emaciated hand for it, as if she could caress its gold surface. Framed by the massive doorway, she takes a step toward the sun, her feet touching soft emerald grass, dotted with navy flowers.

The shriek of the alarm slices across Lenalee like a sword in her mind, filling her ears with an insane howl. She tips forward, scrambling away from the entrance on her hands and knees, ragged dress dragging across the dew-wet blades of grass.

(:~:)

Lightning dances across the glares of Kanda and Leverrier, connecting them like two panes of sky separated only by thrumming energy and ozone. Leverrier now having stood up, Mugen's point rests over his heart, but Kanda is wordless as he returns the challenge.

Finally, Leverrier speaks. "Very well then," he says, without a hint of regret, "I shall have no choice but to put you, Kanda Yuu, in–"

In the infinitesimal time between Leverrier's hesitation and the sudden wail of the alarm, Mugen wavers, as if suddenly heavy, and both the man and boy tense, as if sensing a sudden change in the air, a thrum of foreshadowed conflict.

Kanda is gone from Leverrier's presence before the man can utter another word, Mugen held to the side and behind him as he waltzes on a breath of air and speeds down the hallways, darting between panicking members of different departments, leaping off the walls every other corner, the tips of his boots barely making a sound on the hard stone floor, his coat like shadow following and his cerulean hair flowing like midnight water behind him.

Through the corridors, past lamps and rooms of mysteries, each pool of shadow only a fleeting passing, untold secrets in libraries and laboratories, men and women in white coats, falsely innocent or blankly ambivalent, every door of wood and stone and metal holding the weight of a mountain. So Kanda follows the ways of the Order, the only ways he has ever known, apart from the place of horrors where he was born. Finally, the entrance hall, urgency lending his footsteps echoes as he transverses the grey expanse like a stone skipping across water, into the sunlight, through a circle of people and–

Kanda slides to a halt beside a shaking Lenalee, who curls in on herself, sobbing, as a man with in a white coat towers over her, asking ominously, "What were you trying to do, Lenalee?" Seeing Lenalee shrink in fear leaves no doubt that this is one of the Order's negotiators, so Kanda shoves him aside roughly and crouches down by Lenalee. She refuses to open her eyes – perhaps not recognizing him through a film of tears – but seems to shiver in the morning light, so he wraps his coat around her and doesn't say anything more.

Heavy steps, ringing with authority, declare Leverrier's presence. The mirror-polished leather shoes stop by Lenalee's head. "Lenalee," he says, in a gentle voice, as if he were speaking to his own daughter, "Why did you try to escape?" Then a sardonic smile twists his features into something resembling a grimace, and his voice loses none of its façade of lightness, but somehow becomes edged with steel. "You knew you never could. You can never escape the Order."

Although these words seem directed toward Lenalee only, Kanda knows they are meant for him also, and without his realising it, his hands clench over her frail fingers. Lenalee's hands shiver beneath Kanda's. He stares up at Leverrier, his free hand on Mugen by his side. The Inspector reads the pure hate in Kanda's expression, and says imperiously, "Very well, then. But you must escort her back to her room yourself. And _do_ try to ensure that she doesn't escape a second time, or it will be _your _life you need to worry about, _child_."

The circle of white-coated people around the two Exorcists melts away back into Headquarters, leaving two small figures coated in sable huddled on the grass. Leverrier smirks slightly as he turns and leaves, his footsteps sounding about as subtle as an elephant's. The huge stone doors slam shut with an ominous crash behind them.

For a while, there is no sound except birdsong, the rustle of Autumn wind through the dew-laden leaves, and a hopeful warmth and glimmer around them, as if a cloud had just moved aside overhead, allowing the full radiance of the morning light to reach them. Lenalee has not yet raised her head to see who it is that stays by her side, but finds herself feeling, for the first time in months, safe. Kanda frowns as he notes that every camera on the Order's tower is pointed in their direction, so half-drags, half-carries Lenalee over to and behind a tree standing rather aside from the treeline, shielding them from the scientists' prying eyes.

As her fingers curl tighter into her companion's arm for support, Lenalee blinks away the last of her tears and finds herself staring at the Rose Cross, twinkling incongruously in the morning sun, sewn onto the front of the dark coat wrapped around her. So…the one beside her is an Exorcist. _General Tiedoll? But it cannot a General; the black fabric is lined with silver, not gold. And the coat is far too small to be any adult's, so that only leaves…_

So as she finds herself set down gently in the sun-dappled grass, the tree bark rough against her hands, Lenalee finally raises her head, finding herself face to face with Kanda Yuu.

Kanda appears somewhat startled by the recognition in Lenalee's violet eyes, and trips back slightly, faltering on the edges of his boots before crashing down on the wet blades of emerald next to her. As he rights himself, another sound, one unheard of for so long that it seems fresh and new, tinged with familiarity, shocks him into a daze.

Lenalee is laughing.

"What?" Kanda snaps angrily, out of habit, before mentally stabbing himself, at the same time trying unsuccessfully to squash down a warmth suddenly rising in his heart. He doesn't quite know what it is, but he _does_ know that Lenalee's laughter is somehow making him feel ridiculously relieved.

Lenalee does not seem to have taken offense. Rather, a ghost of a smile appears on the young Exorcist 's features as she sees his expression morph, and she says in a voice dry from disuse, "Welcome home, Kanda."

Kanda just gapes at the radical change in her and finds himself rendered mute.

Watching Kanda beside her, Lenalee realises for the first time that his coat swamps her with folds of sable. He must be far taller than her now. "You've been through a lot, haven't you?" she murmurs, almost to herself.

"Yes." His mouth is so dry, Kanda cannot utter another syllable. Although he can barely breathe, Kanda decides that he somehow likes this feeling.

"Why are you here?"

The question is so sudden, Kanda is unable to do anything but croak, "What?"

Lenalee sighs, and repeats the question. "Why are you doing this, Kanda?"

Kanda feigns anger to cover the sudden surge of hurt within, something he usually succeeds doing. But he knows the tremor in his voice has given him away when he half-shouts, _"Don't you know?!"_

Lenalee, unperturbed at Kanda's apparently seething expression, simply tilts her head and graces him a smile, a real one this time. "Of course I do," she whispers. Kanda's expression turns so quickly from one of rage to surprise that it prompts Lenalee to reach out for his hand. "You're my friend. Nakama watch out for each other, don't they?"

Dark eyes close momentarily as Kanda sighs. He'd forgotten how young Lenalee is, or how different she is from him. Kanda himself isn't physically much older, but he has seen enough for lifetimes. This, and his solitary personality, is what fuels the wryness in his voice and the maturity of his mind. "Of course," he manages. "Friendship." The word tastes strange in his mouth, sweet, but somehow not quite what he had been searching for.

Lenalee nods and tips her head back, allowing the dappled sunlight to fall on her face. In the alternating light and dark of leaf-patterned shadow, the bruises on her wrists and ankles are nearly invisible. Her sun-brightened skin seems to glow with a new vitality. "I'd forgotten what sunlight was like," she murmurs.

A thought suddenly surfaces in Kanda's mind. "Why do they lock you in your room? You seem sane to me." The moment the words leave his mouth, he curses inwardly at their bluntness.

But Lenalee's answer is equally direct. "I refused to serve the Order any further," she replies. "But the only escape Exorcists have from servitude is death, so…" she traces the bruises on her skin, as if cleansing them from a foul memory.

Kanda jolts at the casual acceptance in her voice, as if her ordeal is unavoidable, bound to her days as she is bound to the Order. He had not realised that the ways of the Order had reached her innermost identity as they have his, changing their perception of the world and lacing their words with an adult's world-weary tone.

And with that understanding, Kanda discovers that Lenalee may not be so different from him after all. He doesn't quite know whether that is a comfort or a grievance, but he presses on: "Is there nothing you can do to make them release you?" he whispers urgently.

"Total servitude," Lenalee sighs, her skeletal fingers tearing the grass by her feet. "How could I be released when my life itself is imprisoned by the Order?"

Kanda blinks, struck. He had accepted his existence as one of loyalty to the Order, of unquestioned following of commands, as bitterly and angrily done as could be. He had been born to the Order, formed in mind and body by forced Innocence, and served his lifetime in its dark halls, finding many secrets and silencing just as many others. Sometimes, Kanda wonders whether his pathetic existence is worth living at all. _But perhaps it is just that. Where would I be if I did not fight the Millennium Earl? Fighting the Earl…it may have given me an enemy to hate just as much as I do the Order._

Kanda glances upwards to find Lenalee looking at him curiously. With a start, he realises he had been muttering to himself, glaring at a patch of grass with vicious killing intent. He lets out a slow breath. "This…this is the best we can have. You aren't like me, Lenalee. You haven't been bound to the Order from the moment you were born. Happiness can be found here–" he chuckles hollowly. "Not for me. It is far too late to help me. But you have Johnny and Reever and Tup and Jerry and many others. They serve as you do, and although they risk their lives less than Exorcists', they have already given their lives to the Order. They have left their families behind, so perhaps you could be part of their new family?"

"What do you mean?" Lenalee says.

"I mean, you…you change people," Kanda struggles to find words. "You may not know it, but when your smile… it is one of the only heartfelt things in these dark halls. When I – when others see it, it warms them, gives them a sliver of hope, even to those who have never seen the true light of freedom since their birth." _Like me,_ Kanda adds silently, only for his cheeks to redden when he realises what he has said.

Fortunately, or perhaps not so, Lenalee takes his blush as a sign he cannot express what he understands about her. "Am I really like that?" A young girl's question, simple in its naivety.

"Yes." Kanda does not trust himself to say more. After all, he has spoken more in the past few minutes than he has in, he thinks, his lifetime. _ Except perhaps to Alma._ His jaw clenches as wave after wave of relentless blood-filled memories threaten to overwhelm him, an endless scream reverberating from between his temples.

A warm hand in his jolts him out of his waking nightmares as a friend lifting him from water, his head breaking free of the enclosing flow.

"Kanda," Lenalee murmurs, almost to herself, "I…I can try to do what you say. But why don't you join us?"

_Join…them?_ For a moment, the possibility dances over his mind, hope springing unbidden from recesses unknown in his heart. But over a decade of suffering overwhelms him in a battle that cannot be won. "I'm sorry, Lenalee," he chokes. "I can't. I've experienced too much."

"I'm sorry too," Lenalee says decidedly, but her next words surprise him. "To be happy again, I want my brother back."

"Your brother?"

"Komui nii-san." Lenalee whispers. "I won't have the courage to break free until he's here."

Kanda gently adds pressure to his comforting grip on her fingers, quite liking the feeling. "I'll send for him."

The next moment, the breath whooshes out of his lungs as Lenalee tackles him with a hug. "Can you really do that?" her voice is one of unbelieving desperation, hardly daring to hope. "Really?"

"I promise." The two words strike a chord within him, like the shudder of air preceding a sword's smooth dance in silver. "I'll bring him here," he murmurs. "But it may take a while," he adds, as Lenalee hugs him tighter. Dazedly, he finds his arms returning the gesture.

"Thank you," Lenalee sobs tears of gratitude into his shirt. "Thank you." Kanda lowers his head and, possessed by some unknown emotion, kisses the top of her head.

Perfect silence.

And then the white coated men are there, tearing Lenalee away as unforgiving metal once again clicks shut around her wrists, and Kanda is warned away with a sparking device to Lenalee's throat, reduced to listening to her screams as her room door closes behind her.

"I'll find him!" Kanda shouts at the narrowing gap. "I'll find your brother and bring him back here!" The door shuts with a groaning retort of solid steel.

Kanda's hands ball into fists. "I promise," he whispers again. "Lenalee."

(:~:)

And so, on the wintry white blanket of snow on the last night of December, Kanda finds himself once more before the gatekeeper, but not alone this time. A dark-haired man straightens his glasses beside Kanda, and says nothing but, "I'm here to see my sister, Lenalee Lee. I will serve."

Kanda shrugs off Komui's hand on his shoulder and barks in a voice that only later does he understand is that of a man, not a boy, "Kanda Yuu. Back from a mission. Open the gate." He feigns authority over a thudding heart.

And later, when soft lamplight pours over the huddled form of Lenalee, with Komui gently shaking her shoulder beside her, Kanda watches from the doorway and catches Lenalee's quiet words.

"_I'm home."_

Kanda allows himself just one smile. One for a new beginning for Lenalee. "Happy new year, Lenalee," he whispers.

(:~:)

**Did you like the fluff? Was it deliciously dark, or a bit too macabre? XD Please review. I'd like to hear your opinions.**


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